My asthma doc said no... use flovent and albuterol instead because the
long-acting seravent has a longer half-life.

Then again, I've found my inhaler use drops radically when I up my magnesium
and vitamin C--I went from needing advair *and* albuterol *and* singulair
*and* zyrtec to just singulair and zyrtec. Singulair was not one she was
comfortable with, but it's category B vs. the cat C for the inhalers.

Magnesium (citrate, 300 mg once a day or 200 mg twice a day when it's bad
out) has made an incredible difference in how well controlled my asthma is.

Hiya -

I have talked to my doc about the possibility of becoming pregnant and what to
do about the medications.  He told me, plainly, there are no studies that show
how these drugs affect pregnancy.  I mean, how many people are going to show up
to that kind of study?

What he said was that the risk of any side effects are outweighed by the
possibility of wheezing, because it is much more damaging to the baby to have
the lack of oxygen during an attack.  Which makes sense.  He did say, however,
that when and if the time comes, he would recommend not breastfeeding because
he some of  the medication can be expressed in the milk.

I take prednisone, albuterol, & advair for my asthma and that is what I would
be taking if pregnant also.  

I hope this helped a bit.

Life is uncertain - eat dessert first.
Nancy
8=: )

I took advair and albuteral during my pregnancy last year and I have a
healthy 10 month old.  Unfortunatly though she does have asthma as well and
has to have the occasional liquid dose of albuteral.  but other then that
she is very healthy.

Jennifer
Ariana 8/17/03

I took flixotide (flovent) and serevent, prednison, ventolin and atrovent
through out both of my pregnancies and both kids are just fine.
It is very important to keep your asthma under control throughout the
pregnancy and I was advised not to stop or reduced any of my medication.
Hope it helps.

Renae

Advair is a combination of fluticasone and salmeterol, and is rated
Pregnancy Category C.
The safest steroid inhaler is Pulmicort [budesonide], which has
now had its safety rating raised to Category B. See:

http://www.pulmicortinfo.com/safety/index.asp
"Pulmicort Turbuhaler is the ONLY inhaled corticosteroid with a
pregnancy Category B rating"

If you switch to Pulmicort, you may also need to add a
bronchodilator to replace the Serevent [long acting bronchodilator].  

Ellis

There is not much data to support a decision. There have
been several small studies specifically looking at
salmeterol in pregnancy and no evidence of birth defects has
been noted. There also has been no concerns raised by
routine surveilance of women taking the drug while pregnant.

There is absolutely no data in breast feeding. Because of
this many experts recommend against breastfeeding while
using it. However, when you consider that albuterol is
considered safe to give in oral form to infants (read: high
serum concentrations) and that the serum concentrations of
salmeterol in patients using it are extremly low (hence
probably also low in breast milk - but known for certain) it
is hard to imagine that significant harm is likely.

The common advice for inhaled steroids is to stay on them
for both pregnancy and breast feeding. Of course, if the
dose of medications can be lowered it should be,
pregnant/breastfeeding or not. So in the end one would have
to weigh the proven benefits of breast feeding to the baby
and  the presumed benefit of salmeterol to the mother (if
you do not presume she needs it then she should stop it)
against the unlikely but unknown risk of the salmeterol to
the baby. It is completely a judgment call.